What Motivation is?
In Psychology and philosophy motivations are stimulus to move a person to make determined actions and persist in theirs for its finish. This term is related to the will and interest. It is the emphasis through a determined medium to satisfy a necessity, creating or increasing with it the necessary impulse to put in a new play this medium or this action for good to let do it. The attitudes are what they lead the behavior of people through the work.
It is the impulse that initiates, leads and maintains the behavior until reach the goal or wanted objective.
Are there sorts of motivation in learning –teaching English? How can they help the teachers to work?
Motivation is the activation or energization of goal-oriented behavior. Motivation is said to be intrinsic c or extrinsic. It is defined as the learner´s orientation with regard to the aim of learning a second language. It is divided into two basis types:
Integrative motivation is characterized by the learner´s positive attitudes towards the target language group and the desire to integrate into the target language community. Meanwhile, Instrumental motivation underlies the goal to gain some social or economic reward through second language achievement, thus referring to a more functional reason for language learning.
Of course ,there are methods ,techniques and procedures in which teachers have to use in lessons but the most important aim of our ¨ first lesson¨ is to interest and to motivate the students ,in order to want to come back to our next lesson .For instance : when you work with first level of medical students , you need to show interest giving some details about an interesting topic like : ask for and giving personal information about yourself or themselves. The teacher not only provides a positive environment but also encourage participation in which our students can bring their own experiences to the learning environment ,we can also vary the oral and written tasks and use them in short or long time depending on the characteristics of the group, the age, their interests, their feelings, attitudes, aptitudes cultural values and beliefs.
Examples of motivation activities used with third level year of medical students.
Unit 1: A Standard Cuban Family. Source: Vision III.
First, the students have to use communicative language applying different expressions like:
—asking for and giving personal information, talking about people, expressing habits and routines ,about activities in progress, and planning to do things .
In my lesson I talked about my family and I showed some pictures about them, I talked what they do ,where they live ,work, age, likes and dislikes, etc, I had to prepare the group dividing in subgroups to work with this topic ,then they have to talk about their own family .In this case, my students are from different countries, they have the possibility to exchange ,and it is a way to express their knowledge ,develop their habits and abilities and have reliable by themselves.
Another example is to use conditionals in different manners. This grammatical structure is very hard for students. Teacher has to look for simple ideas or situations, beginning with the use of modal verbs and the tenses: present, past and future. Then try to play with some little cards completing sentences using modals or tenses according to the situations, later to change the activity completing ideas in cards, or paragraphs and with this one we can ask answer questions, or make students discuss about any topic that they like or are interested in.
Summary:
We may express that if we want to teach English as a second language we need to motivate for success taking into consideration the student´s needs, abilities, attitudes and interests. Besides, we emphasizes cooperation, respectful, of the learners and trust individuals and make a positive environment in our lessons from the beginning lesson up to the last one.
Bibliography:
Webster dictionary
Gardner,R.C. ( 1982) Language attitudes and language learning
Gardner and Lambert, W.E. (1972) Attitudes and motivation: Second language learning, Newsbury.
Latefl – Voices magazines. May-June 2010 Issue 214.
Wikipedia
Myenglishpaper . Com-blog-glossary-edleft-teaching
Google scholar: www tuition.com hk-psychlogy-ihtm.